Thanks for the feedback, guys, you help make writing these a real pleasure when I'm stuck in rut (and there have been a lot of ruts lately!). Schoolwork combined with the tragedy of Ike, this just didn't get done as fast as it should have. But thanks for your patience, kids, and happy reading!
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Falling Slowly Chapter 6
So I'm in my hotel room, drinking wine again.
I'm not normally a drinker; I'll have one or two on social occasions mostly. But since I arrived in New York I seem to be doing more drinking alone than I have in my life. I'm not even really in the mood to find a club or a bar, where I might be able to find someone to drink with me. Nope, I'm content to sulk in my expensive hotel room and drink by myself, wallowing in the depths of my bad mood. I sit sprawled on the cushioned chair, in my night clothes (flannel pajama pants and a black cami), with a monster sized glass to make the night go by just a little bit faster.
What do they say about drinking alone? I can't remember.
This is my second bottle of Pinot Grigio this week, but after today I certainly needed it. Work at the studio was particularly stressful, considering that the project I had invested so much time and money in is now very much in jeopardy.
The day had actually started very well, with Daddy calling to tell me that all of the executives on the board had listened to some of Zoë's tracks and were willing to do more than consider the EP we had been recording, they had agreed to fund a full length studio album at our studios in Los Angeles. It truly was a momentous occasion, for an artist this new to get signed on a few starting tracks spoke volumes of the perceived potential from the record company.
And her reaction was excited and ecstatic just like it should be, but the good feelings came to a screeching halt when she and her 5 foot shrill voiced harpy of an agent informed me that they would not be leaving New York under any circumstances.
"But you don't understand," I pleaded, "this studio space is not our principle recording area. Our studios are in Los Angeles, and the deal would only happen if you came to LA to record. It wouldn't look good for you or me to hole ourselves up in New York waiting for them to come to us. They'd throw everything, all our hard work out the window!"
"But I just don't understand why Ms. Marquez can't record here," the Harpy screeches in reply.
And on went the argument. The reasons given for wanting to record in New York were understandable, but not under any circumstance a deal changer. To have to pay extra for studio space in New York when they had technologically advanced studios in LA would be the deal breaker. Eventually, Tony had to break it up so that we could continue working. We were paying for this studio time, after all.
We continued recording afterward, but not as cheerily as before. The whole thing left a sour taste in my mouth, and no one was really putting their heart into their work any longer. The Harpy had just put the whole EP in jeopardy.
And I still can't stop thinking about Lilly. About how she's changed, how I've changed, how I wished that we would swallow our pride and just clear the air between us. It's been a day since I've seen her, so our last meeting is still fresh in my mind. I drifted off way too many times when I knew I should have been concentrating, but thank God no one noticed.
The curtains are open, and I enjoy my very expensive view of the city's beauty. I see the lights on the roofs and sides of buildings, from curtainless windows, to street lamps and signs and head and tail lights of speeding cars. Nights in New York are just as hectic as New York days, they just have different lighting.
It's not even that late, I realize as I glance at the clock on the nightstand. Only a little after 8. I've been up since 5:30 for marathon recording and now am totally exhausted, but trying to get some sleep right now would be a pointless exercise. I never sleep much when I'm stressed or frustrated, it's been this way since I was a girl, and now seems like an appropriate time to be feeling both.
The insomnia itself seems existential; the seconds tick by in slow, steady fashion, where I'm stuck in limbo. Too late for the day before, too early for the next. I take another gulp of wine. I know I need to sleep. I'm still very concerned about my outward appearance, and these bouts of sleeplessness must make my eyes look horrible. I sit down heavily on the comfortable hotel bed, and turn my attention towards whatever is on the television I just turned on.
"Welcome back to Entertainment News I'm Mark Reynolds with all the tasty tidbits about your favorite celebs." I lift my head up slightly and take another sip of my wine. Intelligent programming, I think sarcastically.
"Tonight is all about L-O-V-E and we've got the latest news on romance with the stars."
This, at least, is entertaining for me to watch. It's like playing a never-ending game of true-false.
"First down to steamy Miami where cameras caught singer Esmeralda and her new hubby, baseball star Freddie Orroco canoodling all over the city. The luscious leading Latin lady showed off her man and her pricy 2 million dollar wedding ring and the newlyweds were also seen enjoying the hot night club scene."
"Good for her." I had met singer Esmeralda once at the Grammy's when I first started producing. She was a nice girl, and I was happy for her. It was her, after all, that introduced me to my first girlfriend.
"Next we're hopping across the pond to jolly old England. Action star Jake Ryan was seen cozying up with British starlet Amelia Warren, who is his co-star in the vampire flick "Blood Dawn". Reports say that the two were all over each other as they took in the sights around London town. Neither of the stars' reps will confirm, but friends of the Hollywood hottie confirm to Entertainment News that 'Jake is totally smitten.'"
I sip my wine coolly. This is news to me, but by no means shocking. Jake Ryan always seemed to have a habit of dating his co-stars.
"And last but most certainly not least comes news from the Big Apple itself, New York City. Former teen pop sensation turned mega million music producer Miley Stewart, better known as Hannah Montana, has been spotted in New York after months keeping in the shadows. She was seen having a coffee date with an unknown female admirer this week."
And on my TV is a grainy photo of me hugging Lilly in the coffee shop the morning I ran into her. Her back is to the camera, but mine is not, and I have the sappiest look on my face. I almost spit my wine out. Oh my god. And here I thought I was in the clear with the paparazzi. Stupid, stupid.
Damn it. I throw up a silent prayer that Lilly's not watching television right now. The picture then switches to a zoomed in shot of the kiss I planted on Lilly's cheek. I feel my cheeks grow hot, and it's only partially from the sudden ingestion of alcohol.
"Miss Stewart hasn't been seen in any romantic poses in public since her public break up with Jake Ryan in 2009 and her shocking relationship with dancer Julia Ivanova last year. No details yet, but we'll keep you updated."
Okay. That's it. No more TV for tonight. I turn the set off and flop onto the bed. I remember a moment with Lilly, one of our last, that took place in a bed much like this on.
--
Morning. Light streams through my window, forcing my bleary eyes to open. I'm in my bed, like I should be, but I sense that something is different, that something has changed. I stretch, yawn, snuggle back into the warmth of my bed, pull up the sheet to try and block the sun. It seems just a little too bright this morning, and there's a slight aching at my temples.
And then, all of my memory rushes back to me. The party. Drinking. Lilly. Kissing Lilly. Touching Lilly. Lilly touching me in return.
I half sit up in bed, and feel next to me for her, but the space where she lay is empty. The sheets are still warm, she's either still here, or just left. I don't know which one would make me feel better.
Then I hear sounds coming from the bathroom, and Lilly comes into sight once more.
She's nearly naked, just in her bra and underwear. I am aware of it, and blush at my own obvious nakedness, pull the sheet on the bed further up. Her face is unreadable. I feel a thickness begin to form at the back of my throat, it clogs my ability to speak.
"I'll be out of your way soon." She tries to make the words nonchalant, but her voice shakes with underlying nervousness and emotion.
Finally, I open my mouth. "Oh. I thought you might want to talk about it."
She breaks our gaze and moves across the room. "I figured that you wouldn't want to." She grabs her pants from the floor and pulls them on in one fluid motion. I watch, feel perverted for doing so. I see hickeys on her neck. Did I create those?
"Look," she says, "I know I fucked things up, Miles, so if we can forget it and still just be friends…" her voice trails off. She moves towards me, sits down on the end of the bed.
"Lilly?"
"Yeah," she replies, softly.
"When did you know you were gay?"
She sighs. "I'm not really sure. It was always weird kissing my boyfriends, but I figured it would get better over time. But it didn't."
"Oh." I realize now what a lousy friend I've been. All the times she had told me she was fine, when I saw pain in her eyes when she smiled, I never connected any dots. Never thought about the struggle that she must have been going through. I was too busy wrapped up in my own issues to think about all the pain my best friend was going through. I'm overcome with a desire to hug her, to hold her to my body, but as I move towards her she stiffens.
"This is all my fault."
"No, it isn't." I reply firmly. "I participated equally last night, if you'll remember."
I see the pale skin of her cheek flush. "But what now?"
"I don't know." And I don't. Do I love her? She's my best friend. Am I gay, too? Does that even matter at this point?
"I'm in love with you, Miley," her voice is close to tears, and it makes me want to cry, too.
"Lilly, I love you…but I just don't know…"
"I know," she interrupts, not wanting hear the rest. "I know. And that's okay." She turns to me once again, tears streaming down her face. "I just need to know that you won't hate me."
"God, of course not," the thickness in my throat breaks, and I begin to cry too. "Lilly, I could never hate you."
She turns away again. "Good. Good."
I quickly wipe the tears from my eyes. "But we can still hang out. We have the whole summer before we go to school."
For a few long moments, Lilly doesn't reply. She retrieves her shirt from where it was thrown, pulls it over her head, and pulls her long blonde hair back into a messy bun.
"I won't be here for the whole summer. I'm going to see my dad in New York."
"Oh, okay. Well I can visit you wherever you're going to go. Did you choose yet?"
She averts her eyes from mine.
"Actually, I was thinking of going to Barnard College."
"Where is that? Is it south of LA?"
"No. It's in New York City."
My jaw drops. "What?!"
"Nothing's been finalized! It was just on a whim that I even wrote the essays for the application. I just wanted to see if I could get in. I just thought…"
"You could have told me about all this!"
"I'm sorry, Miley. I've just always wanted to try and be a writer in New York and I thought it might make me happy and…"
She keeps talking, but I've tuned out, letting the sheet fall around my waist, now oblivious of my nakedness. Why is this happening now? I knew she wanted to write, but I had never taken our sleepover whisperings of her living in New York seriously. I had been so stupid.
"Just say it, and I'll stay. I won't leave if you don't want me too. I could go to UCLA or somewhere else…" her voice trails off desperately.
"Miley?"
Say something, you idiot.
"Miley?" Tears are reforming in her eyes, and I pull mine away. I feel awful, I want to crawl under my bed and just die. I'm breaking her heart, and it kills me. But I open my mouth, and I can't speak. She's offering to put her life plans on hold for you, whether or not you return her love or not. I finally speak, the most hurtful words that I've ever said to anyone.
"Lilly. Just go."
Silence. The pain in her eyes, watching my words rip her heart into pieces. And the light goes out of her eyes, replaced by a steely reserve.
"Okay then. I'll leave you alone."
And she's gone.
--
My reverie is brought to an abrupt ending by someone knocking on the door. Did I imagine it? No, there it is again, and this time I force my lazy self to get up and make my way towards the door.
God, who could it be at this hour? Maybe the Harpy had come back to screech a little more in my face about the proper way to draft and execute a contact. I chuckle a little on the inside, and lean forward to peer through the peephole in the door. Many years of accumulated scratches on the glass outside make the figure on the other side rather unrecognizable, but he or she is too tall to be the Harpy, so I relax the tiniest bit. Wine glass still in my other hand, I remove the chain on the door, turn the lock, and pull the door open to face whoever is outside.
"Lilly. Hi." I don't bother to try and hide the surprise in my voice.
"Can I come in?"
She's wearing a large navy blue hoodie with the hood up, and athletic shorts. It seems unlike her, more like the past Lilly than the modern Lilly. It makes me feel a little bit nervous, more like past Miley than modern Miley. She glances down at her attire briefly, then looks back up at me. Her blue eyes seem to glow from within the cave created by the hood. "Excuse the lack of fashion. I was on my way home from the gym."
"Please, come in."
I say it as casually as I possibly can, even though inside I am in a jumble. What ever happened to that unspoken rule? The one where we meticulously plan out when and where we are going to meet so that we fully prepared for seeing each other. What happened to that? Because now she's here, at my hotel room door, and I am most certainly not prepared at all.
"Thanks," her voice is distant, like she's preoccupied with other thoughts, but she steps into the room as soon as I pull it open.
"Wow, what a room" she comments off-handedly as I close and lock the door behind her. "You guys in the music biz really know how to travel in style." She strolls into the room slowly, back turned to me.
"Thanks," I say cautiously, watch her. She paces around the room a little more, touches the oak desk with one finger, drags it across the smooth polished wood. A quick memory flashes through my mind, of Lilly dragging that very same finger down my throat, my chest, my stomach hungrily as my eighteen year old body writhes and arches into the touch. My breath catches a little in my throat, and I will the thought out of my mind.
"Wine?" I hold up the bottle of Pinot, but she shakes her head.
"Would you like to sit?" I motion to upholstered chair next to the bed. She nods, and move to sit in the chair. I set my glass of wine down on the nightstand next to the clock and sit on the bed across from her. As I situate myself in a cross-legged position, I steal a glance at her bare legs (why on earth is she wearing shorts in this weather?), and see a horrendous looking bruise on one smooth toned leg. "What on earth happened to your leg?"
There I go again, being too forward, but I watch with pleasure as she blushes, a much darker shade of red this time.
"Let's just say I got in a fight with a treadmill and I didn't win" she laughs nervously, and stretches out her leg to get a better look at it. "God, it gets bigger every time I look at it."
Now I'm looking at her leg, but not specifically at the bruise. Now it's my turn to blush. I avert my eyes quickly.
"So what did you want to talk about?" I wish I had my wine right about now, to sip, or even just to hold the glass. I start to get fidgety, and I feel my fingers begin to twitch in anticipation of Lilly's words.
"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry that I've been really weird since we've been in touch." I fold my arms across my chest, press them to me tightly and feel my heart beating.
"It's just been really overwhelming seeing you after all this time and I haven't dealt with so many issues about what happened between us."
I nod, take a deep breath, let it out slowly. "You shouldn't be apologizing. I think I owe you some answers that are long overdue."
We lock eyes, and for the first time in a long time I feel completely out of sorts, I can't sense anything but the bright blue of hers linked with mine. Seconds pass that seem like hours, and then, she speaks.
"Why didn't you return any of my calls or emails? I mean, eight years, Miley. I just had to stop trying after awhile."
It's a simple statement, but I hear the pain in her words. And I can imagine it. Sending emails to your supposed best friend and only seeing an empty inbox day after day, sending text messages that never get replies, leaving forlorn voicemails, every day more certain that I wasn't even listening to them anymore.
But I was. Every single one. The voicemails especially made me want to cry, to scream at myself for my utter stupidity. She was gone. In New York City, for God's sake, almost 2500 miles away.
"Because I was scared, Lilly. The night we..." What words should I use? It doesn't really matter, of course, but then again, it does. "…had sex was the first time anything really happened between us, and we had been drinking, and weren't really thinking about the consequences of our actions. It all just happened too fast. I tried a thousand times to deal with what happened between us but by the time I did it was too late. You were long gone."
A silence falls over the room, thick and heavy like a blanket, and even though my heart is pounding and I feel awkward and nervous I cannot take my eyes off of Lilly. Her hair, damp and pulled back. A few beads of moisture cling to her brow, perhaps sweat, perhaps from a shower she's just taken. Her mouth partially open, short breaths, blue eyes wide and searching. I want to reach out and hold her to me, to feel her body next to mine to prove that she's actually here, right in front of me.
After a few long seconds of quiet, she chuckles dryly. "You know, you were my first."
"You were mine, too."
She looks at me incredulously, as if not quite sure to believe me or not. "No shit? I always figured that you and Jake Ryan..."
I wave a hand in dismissal. "Never did. People always assumed, though. But I never let him."
"Oh."
"When did you come out to your family?" I ask.
"About two years after I left California. Dad was surprisingly cool with it, but it took Mom a little longer. We didn't speak for awhile after I told her, but that didn't last too long. She just wants me to be happy."
I nod. "Seeing anybody? Long term girlfriend?"
"Not for awhile now. My last relationship was a little over a year so I decided to fly solo for awhile. What about you? Any guys in the picture? I swear, every other week the tabloids say that you and Jake Ryan are getting back together."
I remember the entertainment show, and gulp nervously. "Ah, not exactly."
"I read about you and that dancer though. Did you guys really date?"
I nod again. "Yeah, she was my first official girlfriend. I dated a few guys before that, but with Julia it got pretty serious."
"How did your Dad take it?"
"He was surprised." I believe the term is 'deer caught in the headlights'. Daddy never saw it coming, but he ended up treating Julia like any of my other boyfriends, like a lion protecting its cubs. "He just wants me to be happy."
Another long silence, but this time it's more comfortable. I feel like, for the first time in 8 years, a piece of my best friend is finally back with me. Of course she's changed, and I wouldn't change that, but a little piece of the old Lilly is finally starting to shine through. When she speaks again, her voice is somber.
"Do you regret what we did in high school? Or did it mean nothing?" she asks as nonchalantly as she can. God. It's a question I have expected, but I wince at the words nonetheless.
Where is my wine?
"No, Lilly," I almost whisper. "I don't regret it, and it could never mean nothing." I reach out and take one of her hands.
"I did have feelings for you, Lilly. I did. I was just so scared to face them that I ended up pushing you away and by the time I realized how much that night meant to me it was too late."
"Me…meant something to you?"
"Yes. You were my first. And I don't regret it at all."
My heart thumps in my chest but to say those words out loud feels so good that I just can't stop speaking.
"And I know that I was a lousy friend, I never helped you through your coming out like I should have. I should have faced my fears and been brave like you were. And the day I let you walk out my bedroom without telling you what I was really feeling was the worst day of my life."
Our eyes are still locked, and mine are beginning to form tears at their corners. But my voice is surprisingly steady. I look at her, beautiful Lilly, beads of moisture at her temples, mouth slightly open. I stare at her lips, try to remember what it feels like to have them resting on mine.
And then she's suddenly pressed against me, wraps me up in a tight, passionate embrace that takes my breath away. I can feel her heart beating, I can hear her breathing, and everything feels just like it used to when I last held her. I return the hug with all my strength.
We pull back just slightly, face each other still wrapped in our half embrace and she whispers to me,
"I've missed you so much."
"I'm sorry it took me this long to find you."
She lets out a soft laugh, and wipes a single tear that appears in the corner of her eye. "I think I'll take that wine now".
Hours later, and I don't want the night to end. We've finished the Pinot, but don't order another. We talk. We talk about the past, about high school like we never have. The more I listen to her, the more I know that all the awkwardness, the waiting, was all worth it. And suddenly, as I stare into her big blue laughing eyes, something turns in me, like a key turning over the tumblers in a lock.
I just might still be in love with her.
"Miley?" She waves a hand in front of my face. "Earth to Miley. You okay? Too much wine?"
I shake my head, then take her hands.
"Come to this thing with me. The girl I'm out here recording for has a live show tomorrow night."
"Isn't a work thing?"
"Not really. I can get you in for free, too. It'll be like when we were kids."
She laughs. "Like a date?" Her tone is joking, but mine is serious.
"So what do you say? It doesn't have to be a date if you don't want to, we can just hang out."
She blushes yet again, so vulnerable and this time I mirror it. She's biting her lip and oh God, I wish I knew what she was thinking and it takes her way too long to open her mouth to speak.
"I'd love to go on a date with you, Miley Stewart."
All my breath leaves me at once.
Eventually she has to leave (work tomorrow morning), and as I close the door behind her I smile.
So today was a good day.
